Are these sills bad?

[Leyland Lawrence]

Hi,

 

Went to look at a car today (BMC) Nice but just a few reservations over the sill on the driver's side. Please have a look and tell me what you think. the door panel gaps are even and the door shuts fine but it is a bit crusty along this seam. It wasn't my car to poke around so couldnt do much more than what you see.

 

Floors themselves look absolutely fine.

 

Can these be patch welded or am I looking at a £600 job here?

 

Thanks for your help.

[Sigmund Fraud]

I don't have x-ray vision, but last time I poked sills like that with a screwdriver I ended up with a pile of ferrous oxide/filler/underseal and a scary looking hole.

 

You may be luckier, but is it worth the gamble ? How cheap is the car in question ?

[dollywobbler]

They look utterly f*cked. Start scraping the underseal off and you will find a lot more crustiness FO SHO. 

[philibusmo]

In my vast experience of rusty cars I can 100% confirm that this sills will be made of brown and air under that under-seal.

[lisbon_road]

They are right.  Always much worse than it looks.  Everything can be fixed with enough time effort, money and insanity.  Welcome to Autoshite.

[Leyland Lawrence]

Thanks I feared as much. It's a well cared for BMC 1100 with FSH. £2k.

 

Oh dear, so £600 a side about right?

[crapcarcollector]

They are fucked. fact. They will be more fucked than you expect. It will make you want to cry, then get angry, then drink beer.

 

But its a BMC, what did you expect? 

 

If its a dolly deal, buy a welder.

[philibusmo]

£100 a side if you buy your own welder, wire and gas... And learn how to weld.

[crapcarcollector]

oops double posted. Its not a dolly deal. run away.

[dollywobbler]

Impossible to say really. Welding will always cost more than you expect, as more rot will nearly always be discovered. A quick plating job will only need redoing properly again a few years down the line.

[jakebullet]

 

Or take your £600 per side, buy a mig and get stuck in. Bound to be more crusty everywhere else mind.

[lisbon_road]

Sorry, I have to come back with this.

 

Back 'in the day' there were many cars around that could be fixed with new sills.  Countless.  But 1100/1300s were different.  If they needed new sills, we'd reckon they needed a whole lot more rot fixed as well, generally structural and hard to do.  Of course, this could be wrong, this one might just need that area attended to. 

 

Whatever you decide, it can all be done and has been a lot of times before.  But it does sound a bit expensive.

[alf892]

Expect to be doing sills and edge of floors.

 

Then more

 

If the rest is REALLY nice maybe with taking on. Not very likely.

 

Depends how realistic the owner is about it's value.....

[Al Bundy]

Where are you getting that price from?i do stag sills for less and they are a pain.

[Leyland Lawrence]

I can't remember where the figure came from, probably just made it up but I thought £300 for the metal work bit then to repaint etc £300?

 

Sounds too far gone, never mind, at least I checked.

[oman5]

If it was me I'd look for a better car. given that its an 1100 you can bet that if the sills are gone that's going to be the top of the iceberg. the sills look like they are held together by the underseal.

[Sigmund Fraud]

It's a well cared for BMC 1100 with FSH. £2k.

 

FSH is the gold standard for modern stuff but irrelevant for a half-century old car. Where it has been stored, how often it has been used etc. will tell you far more about its condition.

 

I'd say the £2K asking price is probably £1K too much. There's always plenty of rusty ADO16s in the market !

 

Like most BMC/BL stuff, they can hide rust depressingly well, so it may be better to buy a restoration project cheap and get it sorted properly than buy a shiny example for top dollar and watch it crumble to nothingness within a few months.

[Bren]

TBH it looks like somebody knows the sills have the structural integrity of a ryvita and have covered them with a lot of underseal.

 

If they are as bad as I suspect they are expect the inner sills and floor to be affected as well.

 

I would look for another car, as it is unlikely you and the seller will ever agree on a price - it is never worth £2k in a million years.

[rml2345]

It would have to be very cheap to be worth taking on ADO16s rot for fun so that small bit of crustyness will only be the beginning. Excellent if you want to learn how to weld though.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Blimey, £2000 and its got holes in the sill closing panels, someone is either proper clueless or a serious grade A chancer.

[forddeliveryboy]

Always worse than it looks, especially when Mr Mig has been busy already, unless in capable and experienced hands, both from a welding pov and old car pov. You never know for 100% sure until you've started the job. Is the rest of the car perfect? If so, you may have the upper hand in a deal if you don't treat the seller as a shyster, unless he is. Explain the car is very likely unift to be used on the roads (sills integral and vital to the car's strength), he no doubt knows the car is needing hundreds spent. If you can buy cheap enough (under a grand defo) and you like it, then there is the possibility of a good buy. Make sure someone who knows has a thorough look elsewhere, too. They can rot, apparently

 

Any pics of the top half?

[Leyland Lawrence]

All really good advice and sadly very much what I feared to be the case.

 

I think I'm just totally out of touch. I see £2k-£3k as an awful lot of money to part with but anything nostalgic (and I'm only talking a nice Dolomite or two door Toledo or something) just seems so out of reach all of a sudden.

 

But then I still think Mars Bars should be 21p. Now I see they're nearly 60p

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I think £2000 should buy a very nice ADO16 or toledo!!!! OK not a show winner perhaps but you defo should NOT need to be getting the welder out on a £2000 bread and butter car like those. Whats going on?

[brickwall]

Aye. You'll be surprised at how many buckets of rust flakes you will be tipping into your wheelie-bin with that sorta rust. Anyway, 2k is way too steep for that imho.  A mobile welder would be looking for about £250 a side just for the edge stuff. Leave it alone and keep looking.

 

This guy will be wanting £1000 and more for a similar car. It has an MOT and solid underneath (apparently)

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Austin-1100-GKP321D-/161268584952?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item258c5b51f8

[crapcarcollector]

There are a lot of pigs in lipstick out there, always has been. Was it genuinely tidy, or was it super shiny and really lovely looking? As a young 'un I worked for an artist who make a car look super shiny and really lovely looking and therefore drop the guard of a potential purchaser from 10 feet.

 

That, and the gift of the gab meant many a Datsun 180B, Mk 2 Escort, Allaggro and Marina went to a new home in less than a fortnight after being bought one stop away from the knackers yard at the local bomb site auction,in sunny Longton. 

 

A ton of wob, a litre of fully synthetic knacker lacquer, and a bent MOT were enough to make tidy profit.

 

They'd look just like that underneath too. freshly undersealed, but with funny looking lumps and bumps (although then it was from the filler and chicken wire).

 

That ADO reminded me of that misspent time.Thanks for the memories!

[catsinthewelder]

That looks like the closing panel between the sill and the floor.  Mine had recently had new outer sills when I bought it but the closing panels are older (possibly the originals) .  I pulled 90 per cent of the nearside one off by hand and chiselled the rest off.  They arn't expensive panels to buy and if they are the only bit that's rusty then the car won't need painting once they are welded on.

 

Pull the rear seat out and the carpets up and check the floorpan and boot floor carefully.  If the seller objects then walk away,  nobody could own an ADO16 and not understand why you would need to check these areas.

 

This is worth a look http://www.ado16.info/buying.shtml

[mouseflakes]

A 2K car shouldn't have rot like that. Seller is either trying their luck or simply clueless.

 

EDIT: Oops! Sorry - realised I have just 'paraphrased' what M. Bolleux posted.

 

It must be true.

[Asimo]

You have to assume it is worse under the clean paint than this one looks:

 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/classic-cars-/151271954096?

[mouseflakes]

I'd love an ADO16.

 

This one...

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1970-austin-1100-/301140687025?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item461d6238b1

 

 

..has failed a recent MOT - but the fail sheet is in the listing and shows no rust issues (only balljoints, tyres, brakes, exhaust and such like).

 

I'd be happier to buy this (looks like seller might let it go for a grand or so?) than something twice the price with an MOT but obvious rot issues.

[robinmasters]

I'd love an ADO16.

 

This one...

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1970-austin-1100-/301140687025?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item461d6238b1

 

 

 

..has failed a recent MOT - but the fail sheet is in the listing and shows no rust issues (only balljoints, tyres, brakes, exhaust and such like).

 

I'd be happier to buy this (looks like seller might let it go for a grand or so?) than something twice the price with an MOT but obvious rot issues.

 

Are those mats a structural part of the floor?